Saturday, 24 October 2009

According to a study reported on in the Toronto Star one-third of Toronto's homeless are immigrants.

More than a third of Toronto's homeless are immigrants, many falling through the cracks due to a lack of jobs and housing, says a new study, the first in Canada to look at immigration status and homelessness.

The study, led by St. Michael's Hospital, surveyed 1,189 individuals in shelters and on meal programs across the city and found that 32 per cent were immigrants; some 10 per cent had been here less than a decade. The numbers did not include refugees, undocumented migrants or those who did not speak English.

I wonder what the number would be if they did include the latter three groups.

A common characteristic of Toronto's homeless is that many of them are stricken by mental health issues as well as alcohol and drug abuse but Toronto's immigrant homeless stand out in one interesting regard.

A majority of Canadian-born homeless people in the study had high school education or less, but many homeless immigrants have vocational training, college or university education, said the article, "The Health of Homeless Immigrants," published in the November issue of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

"Immigrants who are homeless are very different in many ways from others who became homeless," said study co-author Dr. Stephen Hwang of St. Michael's Hospital, an associate professor at the University of Toronto.

"The prevalence of alcohol and drug problems was dramatically lower among homeless immigrants. Yet, I'm somewhat surprised by the high prevalence of mental health issues among them."

Attracting the best and the brightest? It doesn't look like it. Is Canada importing poverty? You bet. A lack of jobs is what drove them to homelessness, according to the study. That being the case then why is Canada bringing in so many immigrants when clearly the nation doesn't need them? There's a reason why Canada has the best educated cab drivers in the world.

Here is a regional breakdown from where Toronto's immigrant homeless come from.

In related news Toronto is preparing for a $500 million fiscal shortfall for next year by making cuts. According to the Toronto Star "soaring welfare costs" are having a burdensome effect on the city.

Soaring welfare costs have put the City of Toronto in such "dire" financial straits that tax hikes and service reductions are virtually certain next year.

[...]

Welfare costs alone run into the hundreds of millions of dollars, and Mihevc said the number of welfare cases is expected to top 100,000 next year - at least 25% higher than in 2008.

How much has immigration contributed to Toronto's "soaring welfare costs" forcing a fiscal shortfall of $500 million? Are Torontonians to expect cuts to public services for the sake of an out of control mass immigration system? Where are the alleged benefits to Canadians such immigration is said to bring?

Volumes during the middle of day "are now higher than peak volumes 15 or 20 years ago," says Mike Brady, manager of Toronto Transportation Services' traffic safety unit.

This has slowed traffic down. "Travel times have gone up."

Longer commute times translate into less recreational hours. This leads to a lower quality of life.

These social problems are easily foreseen but willingly ignored. Canada has been accepting too many immigrants for too long and the costs are becoming more apparent. As long as reason is surrendered to emotionally laden rhetoric about immigration and multiculturalism nothing is going to change for the better.

Canadians didn't want this but are forced to endure it nonetheless. The "social experiment" that our country has been turned into against our will never fail even when it clearly has.

Sunday, 18 October 2009

A "mystery boat" called the Ocean Lady was located and intercepted by Canadian Forces and the RCMP off the northern coast of British Columbia. No visible numbers or flags were seen on the ship so it is likely a smuggling operation. Early news reports state that the ship carried 76 migrants. They are all male with some unconfirmed speculation that children may also be aboard.

Also unconfirmed is the ship's origin but Sri Lanka is the safe bet. Australia has seen its share of decrepit boats carrying illegal migrants to the county's shores and recently a boat carrying 260 Tamils from Sri Lanka was intercepted by Indonesia at Australia's request. You can read about it here.

The migrants being held in Indonesia were destined for Australia. The boat intercepted off the coast of B.C. is likely part of the same smuggling ring. The boat didn't get lost. The men aboard the ship admitted in interviews that their destination was Canada. So all in all, what we are looking at are Sri Lankan Tamils seeking to enter Canada illegally to make an asylum claim.

The fact that all of the migrants on board are men tells us that this is most likely a ploy to game the refugee system to get family and friends into the country. The successful asylum claim opens the door to seemingly endless chain migration where whole families have been transported to Canada out of one immigration application. The problem with this is that these immigrants do not need any pertinent job skills or language skills to immigrate to Canada. It is likely the 76 men on the Ocean Laddy do not have either as well.

Below is a quote made by a spokesperson for the Sri Lankan Tamils being held in Indonesia and reported by Australia's ABC news.

"Ask yourselves one question, if you had no home to go to, if you had no country to live in, if you had no place to go, if you had no country of your own - what would you do and how long would you stay in a boat before you were promised to enter a country that will give you asylum?" Alex said.

"How long will you go? How desperate will you be? Take a look at the picture today, look at my people, we're not only suffering back home, we're suffering here.

"We have no choice, we have no country to go back to, we cannot go back to Sri Lanka."

That statement is self serving. They are fishing for sympathy to gain quick and easy access to a wealthy western industrialized country like Australia or Canada without having to go through proper immigration channels which can be lengthy, costly, and no guarantee of success. The ABC report says that Australia was not their first choice. They say they chose Australia because it was the "cheapest and easiest place to get to, even if it means living in a Malaysian jungle for a month." Really? Cheaper and easier to get to then, say, Tamil Nadu?

Tamil Nadu is India's most southern state with a population of over 66 million people. Tamil is its official language, spoken by almost 90% of the population. Tamil Nadu is culturally, linguistically, and ethnically Tamil. It is also literally located across the street from Sri Lanka. So why spend a month in a Malaysian jungle to get to Australia when you can find safety in Tamil Nadu in less than a week?

India prides itself as being the largest democracy in the world. It's economy is growing with an emerging middle class. It may not be a super power (yet?) but it is a regional power and India is better placed than any other nation to accommodate Sri Lankan Tamils fleeing alleged persecution in Sri Lanka. So why are there more Sri Lankan Tamils in Canada than in India?

These people are not fleeing persecution. Their treatment in Sri Lanka is often over exaggerated. What persecuted people are allowed to have political parties hold seats in government or obtain passports to travel abroad? What persecuted people have official government documents printed in their native language? They may be fleeing poverty but that in of itself is not grounds for asylum. They want to immigrate but lack the attributes that will allow them to. Asylum seekers need nothing more than a good persecution story and a gullible ear. Sri Lanka's Tamils are not union members in Colombia.

Canada cannot allow any of the 76 men to successfully land as a refugee. They should be fed and given a health check then promptly returned to their country of origin. Rewarding this behaviour will encourage more of it. That's why there are over 250,000 Sri Lankan Tamils in Canada. Besides, how many LTTE members hiding among them? The LTTE have successfully set up a fund raising operation in Canada thanks to an abusable refugee system. Do we Canadians like being the land of trusting fools?

Hungary has become Canada's top source nation for refugee claims. Mexico and Czech Republic were at the top spots before visa restrictions were enacted against those countries with Hungary taking the third spot. Now that those restrictions have taken effect slowing refugee claims from Mexico and Czech Republic to a trickle, claims from Hungary have jumped. You can read it here at the Ottawa Citizen.

A sudden wave of refugee claimants has helped make Hungary Canada's top source of asylum-seekers, prompting the federal government to call on Budapest to take action -- possibly against organized crime elements, Canwest News Service has learned.

The government hasn't yet moved to impose visa restrictions on Hungary, as it did over the summer to deal with a flood of questionable claimants from Mexico and the Czech Republic.

But the federal government also hasn't ruled out that option after the number of asylum-seekers skyrocketed during the April-to-June period, making Hungary the third-highest source of claimants after Mexico and the Czech Republic in that period.

Now, with claims from those two countries falling to a trickle as a result of the summer decision, Citizenship and Immigration Canada figures show that Hungary has emerged as Canada's top refugee source country -- even though it is a member of the 27-nation European Union that champions itself as a bastion of human rights in the world.

The number of claims for refugee status from Hungarians rose to 1,353 to the end of September, compared with 285 for all of 2008 and just 24 the previous year.

While Canada does not break down claimants by ethnicity, immigration authorities anecdotally say the vast majority of recent Hungarian refugee claims have been made by Roma.

Kenney had previously denounced similar claims made by Czech nationals as bogus.

The usual suspects it seems.

Visa restrictions are like trying to plug the holes in a breaking levee. The levee is weak, it needs to be rebuilt.

Canada's refugee system is the problem. Thanks to the nation's Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms and the infamous Singh decision anyone from anywhere can make a refugee claim in Canada. That's anyone from anywhere. This includes countries like the United States, Australia, the U.K., France, Denmark, Germany, indeed any country in the European Union of which Hungary is a member. We shouldn't be accepting refugees from these countries at all or any safe third country for that matter especially countries that are signatory nations to the UN convention on the status of refugees. They should be promptly returned from whence they arrived and make their asylum claims there. Believe it or not this is in accordance with the UN.

Canada shouldn't be entertaining any asylum claim made by an individual arriving from a European Union member state. This is an issue the EU can, and should, handle on its own.

Friday, 16 October 2009

Here's what happened. Like in Toronto several months back Sri Lanka Tamils in London were stagging similar protests in response to the plight of relatives living in Sri Lanka during the waning days of the nation's civil war. Like in Canada they wanted the British government to intervene.

At the center of the London protests was a 28 year old man on a hunger strike.

He was the hunger striker at the centre of one of the longest-running demonstrations ever mounted in Britain.

For weeks Parameswaran Subramaniyan lay in a tent outside the Houses of Parliament as Tamils protested about the plight of relatives under attack in Sri Lanka.

At one stage, his supporters claimed he was 'critically weak'.

The protest finally ended in June, but two revelations put it back in the spotlight yesterday.

First, police said it had left them with a £7.1million overtime bill.

Then it emerged that Mr Subramaniyan, 28, had eased his ordeal by secretly eating McDonald's burgers.

What a fraud! And it was conspiratorial since supporters were sneaking food to him.

I doubt many Sri Lankan Tamil refugee claims made in Canada were credible. I point this out so that credibility can be restored to the system to assist those who really need asylum, not grant quick and easy passage to those who want to immigrate to shopping mall Canada by filing bogus refugee claims. There is no reason beyond a concerted campaign to use Canada's refugee system to immigrate to the country to explain why Canada has the largest Sri Lankan Tamil population outside of Sri Lanka.

Monday, 12 October 2009

The Toronto Star published two op-ed pieces that have a mass immigration angle but of course is not addressed.

The first one can be read here. It's about the growing presence of "precarious work" in Canada's labour market.

This week, an international coalition of unions sounded the alarm: Precarious work has reached epidemic proportions.

Around the world – in developed and emerging nations – employers are replacing full-time workers with part-timers, contract staff and temporary personnel. These "non-standard" employees have no job security and no benefits. Their wages usually are low. Their bargaining power is negligible.

"While the impact may be different depending on each country's social and economic conditions, the goal of employers is the same: cheap, flexible labour that can be brought in and dropped at will," says the International Metalworkers' Federation, which is spearheading the global call for action. "This is everybody's problem – today's secure job could be tomorrow's temporary contract."

In Canada, 37 per cent of work is part-time, short-term or casual.[...]The proportion of non-standard workers has been inching up since the 1980s.[...]A decade ago, 68 per cent of working Canadians had jobs that produced a steady income and provided health and retirement benefits. Now it's down to 63 per cent.

And the real jolt is still to come, labour analysts say. Most of the full-time jobs lost in this recession won't come back. Most of the employees laid off in the past year won't find permanent work. When the statistics catch up to the reality, people will be forced to confront the new normal.

The article quotes one time NDP MP Peggy Nash who lost her Parkdale-High Park Toronto riding to Liberal Gerrard Kennedy in the last election. She is concerned about the rise of precarious work which "not only strips people of a decent living", the article states her pointing out, but "it undermines the country's social arrangements" like "pensions, employment insurance, drug coverage, dental care, maternal and other benefits".

She also tabled a private members bill that would have made immigration more open and easier for family members living over seas to immigrate to Canada. It didn't go anywhere, many private member's bills don't, but the fact she tabled it plus her union activism illustrates that the woman cannot connect the dots. It seems to her mass immigration, especially that of the family class kind which is the mass introduction of unskilled work into Canada, and the rise of precarious work are not related in any fashion whatsoever. I had the opportunity to talk to her about Canada's mass immigration system and I can assure you that, though she is sincere and she does care, she is as oblivious about the system as most politicians are, resorting to the easily defeated rhetoric to make her case.

Here's more for the record:

The trouble is, most of the new jobs are part-time, temporary or self-made.

Since the recession began, 485,000 Canadians have lost their livelihood and 155,000 have found work. But almost all the gains are in self-employment (which could mean anything from a laid-off bureaucrat becoming a consultant to a laid-off truck driver buying a rig and becoming an independent owner-operator.)

The editorial that appeared opposite the op-ed quoted above is noteworthy. It is a piece of mass immigration apologetics disguising the paper's true purpose of keeping attitudes soft on immigration so Canada will continue to import more Toronto Star readers that can be sold to advertisers. It's a defense of foreign workers in which we read:

Nor do the benefits all flow one way. "Contrary to commonly held beliefs, migrants typically boost economic output and give more than they take," the UN says. "Immigration generally increases employment in host communities, does not crowd out locals from the job market and improves rates of investment in new businesses and initiatives." Canada's experience confirms as much.

Confirms? I'd like to see how they support that assertion because I don't think that is entirely true. By taking jobs Canadians won't do foreign workers keep wages so low that it discourages Canadians from considering those jobs at all thus maintaining a low wage, low income regime which produces poverty. Also, the unemployment rate in Canada has been steadily increasing with increased immigration. We know poverty in Toronto hits immigrant communities the hardest and that immigrants are taking longer to get established, if at all, and meet their Canadian born counterparts economically. If the "Canadian experience confirms as much" it is that Canada is importing people for whom there are no jobs for outside of low wage, precarious ones which begs the question why are we bringing in so many at all?

This brings me to the next Toronto Star op-ed. It discusses the growing rich/poor divide in Toronto. You can read it here.

As the Vital Signs report shows, Toronto is doing quite well by many standards. It's safer, greener and cleaner than most major cities. It ranks 15th out of 215 cities in terms of quality of living. It's the second richest city in Canada, with an average household net worth of $562,000.

But for many immigrants, young people, the poor and elderly, Toronto is not a great city at all.

The signs are everywhere.

The city ranks 190th in the world and 29th in Canada in terms of housing affordability. Its elderly residents are among the poorest in Ontario. Young families are leaving the city because it's too costly.

Decent paying manufacturing jobs have largely gone. Youth unemployment tops 20 per cent, with many 25-year-olds never having had a paid job. Youth gangs have doubled in the last 10 years.

Most disturbing is the fact that Toronto is witnessing the disappearance of its middle class.

In 1970, some 66 per cent of Toronto neighbourhoods were considered middle-income. By 2005, it was just 29 per cent and it's still falling, mainly because of the explosive increase of poor and very poor neighbourhoods.

Also troubling is that the sense of belonging to our community is the second lowest in Canada, with the rate among second-generation immigrants plunging in the last year.

Rahul Bhardwaj, president of the Toronto Community Foundation, says these trends should concern all residents because, unless we act quickly, we could see our city become a city of haves and have-nots, leading possibly to increased crime and citizen disengagement.

In short, we could become seriously polarized.

According to the UN this shouldn't be happening in Toronto because "Immigration generally increases employment in host communities, does not crowd out locals from the job market and improves rates of investment in new businesses and initiatives." Indeed, Toronto alone attracts 110,000 immigrants each year. The city should be awash with jobs grown out of improved rates of investment in new businesses and initiatives all thanks to immigration. The Toronto Star says the Canadian experience confirms this.

Mass immigration has contributed to and is aiding the increase in precarious work in the Canadian labour market. It sustains it. If Toronto is steadily becoming a city of "haves and have nots" then mass immigration has allowed this to happen. The Toronto experience confirms this. Too many immigrants come to Canada each year, more than the nation can accommodate economically and culturally. Time to cut the numbers.

The Fraser Institute released an insightful report on Canada's mass immigration system. The report's conclusions will be shocking to anyone whose only exposure to discussions related to mass immigration is the pablum forced fed to them by Canada's major media, who see immigrants as potential source of future profits and financial viability, and Canada's political parties who view immigrants as a growing source of urban votes. Their motives for framing and limiting the immigration debate is out of self interest. That's why there is no debate in Canada concerning mass immigration. They cannot allow it even though the effects of mass immigration may be negatively impacting the lives of Canadians.

Fortunately dissenting view points are still allowed to circulate in the country albeit under pressure from politically sensitive parties to "persuade" dissenters to either engage in self censorship or to just plainly shut up. Failing that one's opinions must be filtered through a Toronto-centric paradigm by the gate keepers of political and cultural thought for the entire country. If approved be prepared to have your opinions heavily edited and censored, be denounced as racist and/or "anti-Canadian", or be completely marginalized. Or all three. This is to produce the thought that one's opinions are in the minority and therefore not worthy of discussion when the opposite may be the fact. It is to encourage silence not a free exchange of ideas. Canada says it supports diversity, just not diversity of opinion.

Recent mass immigration has negatively affected Canadian living standards and is challenging the country’s existing national identity, culture, and social fabric, concludes a new book released today by the Fraser Institute, Canada’s leading economic think tank.

[...]

“Since 1990, Canada’s annual rate of immigration has been the highest in the world, resulting in a population increase of 3.9 million people between 1990 and 2006. This mass immigration has had profound effects on Canada’s economic, demographic, social, and political conditions, affecting the well-being of all Canadians including past immigrants,” said Herbert Grubel, Fraser Institute senior fellow and co-editor of the book.

“Unfortunately, most Canadians are insufficiently aware of these effects partly because a code of political correctness tends to identify any examination of immigration policies with racism and partly because Canada’s electoral system rewards politicians who are in favor of the current high intake.”

You can read the publication here online for free or download it here. Or you can buy it here.

I'm not a fan of the Fraser Institute. It is a right leaning think tank I often find myself at odds with. For the record I consider myself apolitical because I cannot enslave my opinions to ideology. But I agree with them on the immigration issue completely. Canada does indeed accept too many immigrants and it has potentially harmful effects that are given almost no consideration when policy is discussed. Canadians' concerns are never entertained and only those who speak favourably of mass immigration are presented as though they speak for all. Canadians are in the dark to the financial costs of supporting the immigration and refugee systems because if known, I suspect, would cause a scandal and fuel a backlash. And it's not just in tax dollars that cost Canadians. The loss of Canadian cultural public spaces to ethnic enclaves and the loss of a strong, unique Canadian identity is being sacrificed to the god of multiculturalism (Canada's official state religion). Canadians are losing a lot relative to what they may gain, if anything.

Sunday, 4 October 2009

Canada has a hard time deporting people thanks to lawyers. As soon as they became influential in shaping immigration policy they fashioned the system to reflect their best interests. Out of this came an absurd appeals process that thumbs its nose at enforcement mechanisms that the government can use to deport undesirables and police the nation's borders.

Here is a National Post report on a man found to be complicit in "crimes against humanity during the Rwandan genocide, and the murder of a neighbour for refusing to have sex with him". He entered the country as a refugee (don't they all!?) but was stripped of this status in 2006.

Henri Jean-Claude Seyoboka, 43, of Gatineau, Que., has already been told at least six times in official and judicial proceedings that he is excluded from refugee protection after investigations by the RCMP's War Crimes Unit, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the Canada Border Services Agency.

Still in Canada and free from custody, he has again appealed to the Federal Court of Canada.

He has been told six times already that he is "excluded from refugee protection" by Canada's judicial system yet he has launched a seventh appeal. How many is enough?

Mr. Seyoboka came to Canada from Rwanda on Jan. 17, 1996, and claimed refugee protection two days later, which he was granted. He then applied for permanent residency status.

In both of his applications, however, he made no mention of his tenure in the Forces Armées Rwandaises (FAR), the Rwandan army, during the height of the genocide.

[...]

Then a witness in Rwanda told the ICTR that Mr. Seyoboka had killed a woman, a neighbour named Francine, after she refused to have sex with him.

[..]

In 2002, an indictment filed in the ICTR against another person spoke of "Second-Lieutenant Jean-Claude Seyoboka" manning a roadblock in Kigali on April 7, 1994, along with members of the Rwandan army and the Interahamwe, the Hutu militia. The group were later ordered to search nearby houses and kill any Tutsis they found and to kill any Tutsis trying to cross the roadblock, according to the indictment.

Henri Jean-Claude Seyoboka is considered a war criminal yet here he is in Canada free of custody and on his seventh appeal to stay in Canada. Is this about justice or just work for lawyers?

Here is a Toronto Star article on a man named Parminder Singh Saini. He was convicted of terrorism in his native land of India after he hijacked a plane and shot at some of its 270 passengers.

On July 5, 1984, when he was 21, he and four accomplices in the militant All India Sikh Students Federation boarded an Air India flight to Delhi from the northern city of Srinagar.

Twenty minutes after takeoff, he and another man stood up. They pushed aside a female attendant, walked to the front of the plane and Saini - in full view of passengers - raised a handgun to the head of a male attendant and fired.

“(The bullet) did not hit him,” the trial judge later wrote in a 184-page judgment, “but there is little doubt that the object of Parminder Singh (Saini).....was to intimidate and terrorize the crew members and the passengers.”

At the cockpit door, Saini fired two or three more shots - risking the plane’s destruction, the court judgment said. One bullet pierced the door, striking the flight engineer in the back, not seriously. Other hijackers beat and stabbed two other crew members with kirpan daggers.

The door opened and Saini seized control of the plane.

The hijackers eventually surrendered and Saini was convicted and sentenced to hang but had that conviction reduced to life imprisonment. After 10 years in prison he was released on the condition that he leave the country, a move by India to dump their problem elsewhere. And of course he chose Canada. No wonder "there are more Sikh extremists in Canada then in India."

Aside from hijacking a plane and shooting at several of his 270-plus hostages - wounding one in the back - Saini lied his way into Canada, has never gained landed-immigrant status, faces deportation and by ministerial order remains a national security threat.

[...]

On Jan. 21, 1995, he presented himself to Canadian customs as Balbir Singh carrying a fake Afghan passport.

He said he had no criminal record and no family in Canada, then went to live with his mother and brother in Brampton. Eight months later, CSIS caught him and ordered him deported.

In two separate reviews, adjudicators declared him a threat. One noted an “almost total lack of credibility and trustworthiness” and “a continuing ability and willingness to engage in unlawful behaviour.”

He's been fighting deportation ever since with courts and tribunals declaring him for the past 15 years "a danger to the public and security in Canada and that he shouldn’t remain". But thanks to the appeals process he remains in Canada and has delayed his deportation for so long that he has been able to get an undergraduate degree and law degree in Canada. The man has no legal status in Canada yet we cannot remove him.

Lawyers ruin anything they get their hands on. They produce no wealth, no jobs, no art, no culture, and add value to nothing. The legal profession is parasitic in nature, attaching itself to a healthy host, bleeding it of anything of value, and undermining its ability to properly function.

Here is a good illustration of the legal profession at work. It's about the significant differences between car insurance rates in Toronto and its outer regions.

But the cost of assessing, treating and compensating the drivers was a world apart. One of the collisions took place in London, Ont., and the driver's claim cost his insurer $1,674. The second incident took place in Toronto and has cost a whopping $51,808 to date.

A major insurer supplied the Toronto Star with 10 sample case histories of comparable collisions, without revealing names, to illustrate the enormous differences in costs between the Toronto area and the rest of the province – differences that will result in major premium increases for GTA drivers if something is not done soon.

The reason is explained in the following:

"We know when lawyers get involved, they want lots of assessments because there you have a dispute. Lawyers are driving costs up in a way because they want to make the case that their client is suffering and they are going to get lots of opinions, and the insurer is going to do the opposite ..."

Cassidy concluded in a study of Saskatchewan's insurance system published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2000, and in subsequent published studies, that whiplash cases would go down, and be resolved many weeks sooner, if no lawyers were involved.

Lawyers make their living on disputes and that is what an appeal is. It is continuous work for lawyers. Canada's immigration system is a mess because of lawyer self interest. Conflict of interest should excluded them from immigration policy decisions yet they remain an influential "stake holder" in Canada's immigration industry. Canada will never be in a position to reform the immigration system as long as lawyers can shape the policy.